Why Insults Bring People Together

Insult

It’s such a truism that wherever you go in life, whatever you achieve, you will invariably meet a few people who are callous and sour, who seem to want to insult others for no good reason. Whether you’re in the dregs or the gods, someone is usually liable to start lobbing vitriol without cause.

I’m not referring simply to a lack of social tact, but to those who speak with the obvious intention of hurting another; that special brand of human that evidently derives pleasure from seeing another become upset.

In conversations relating to social interactions, one of the most difficult things to discuss without bias are these types of abusive people. It’s so easy to turn into a bitching session, because the easiest (and most satisfying) way to look at them and their comments is to simply demonize them.

Because, really, just how difficult is it to follow The Golden Rule? Yes, it’s a cliche but one that remains self-evident: Isn’t it just… easier to be good and polite to people? In a purely practical sense, doesn’t it lessen the burden of social responsibility, of being mindful of others? Doesn’t it make life simpler and more carefree?

Maybe these traits are just habits of thinking, or maybe there’s something more to it. When I discussed this with others, we found ourselves referring to those who have made kindness and compassion a habit as having “figured it out”. It’s not something that necessarily comes with age, either. I know teenagers who seem to have it “figured out” and people of middle-age and older who are very difficult to deal with.

So then, what is the point of putting someone down? Something happened recently that gave me a little perspective on it. Anyone who keeps an eye on the news will know that the world is going through a huge economic crisis. My native country, Ireland, which had been until recently been experiencing an unprecedented financial boom, is now officially entering a recession.

Hearing about this on the news, it does bring a sense of despondence; things are going to get a bit rough.

Recession

But at the same time, I found myself experiencing a definite feeling of satisfaction; a sense of, “Well, it’s about bloody time we copped on to ourselves and stopped wasting so much money”.

I realized that this thought was not so much an objective view; rather, it was a feeling that all these politicians and property tycoons who had spent so much money, all those people who had borrowed ridiculous amounts of cash to purchase huge new houses and cars, were getting their just desserts. I couldn’t help but feel vindicated that those of us who had had financial responsibility drilled into our heads since childhood had come up trumps.

And yet, that’s still a generous description. Because basically, all it boils down to is that satisfying feeling that more people have been brought to your level, that your social status is somehow more justified because more are now there with you.

And isn’t that type of thinking basically a more abstract version of insulting someone outright? It just remains contained rather than spoken. It’s still taking someone down a notch; not because you actually dislike them and feel that they deserve it, but because your own ego needs validation. It’s basically insecurity, and insecurity is very lonely. It causes us to seek out company. And which is the faster method of getting it – – working on oneself in order to remove any neuroses and foibles, or throwing a terrible insult at someone in order to make them feel insecure and lonely too? The personal development could take years, the insult, seconds.

So the person who casts that mean-spirited jibe is actually trying to bring the victim closer to themselves; Misery loves company. It can often be painful to witness the success or happiness of someone who was once in the same boat as you, while you’re still stuck in that boat. That’s why it’s often difficult to see someone you know get a promotion, go on a long trip abroad etc. It’s not because it affects you directly, though your ego may tell you so, but rather because the relationship between yourself and the person leaving has changed. And it’s always easier to leave than to be left behind.

If you look at any Internet chatroom that relates to a psychological condition, such as anxiety, bulimia etc, you will find that they are peopled almost entirely by people who seem to have the condition perpetually, rather than any who have recovered and want to offer help. Is this because people don’t want to help others once they’ve recuperated? No. It’s because the misery of these groups feed off themselves, love the company, and loathe the one who makes the move to leave the nest.

Those who say they are recovered are not immediately praised; in fact, they are regularly vilified and regarded as pariahs in the community. That person no longer meets the standards of sickness and misery necessary for acceptance, and are now considered a dangerous interloper.

Sponge

Indeed, the drive to surround oneself with peers with whom one feels equal is a basic animalistic trait; it even occurs on a cellular level. In his book The Lucifer Principle, author Howard Bloom describes how, when you run an aquatic sponge through a sieve, it will liquify into a muddy substance before its cells regroup . Run two of them into a bucket, and the cells from each will manage to recognise their own kind and reconstitute themselves into their original forms.

Similarly, if a person, dissatisfied with their selves or circumstances, finds themselves in amiable, happy company, they may feel desperately out of place. But who would up and leave their social stratum to seek out unhappier contemporaries? No; since they cannot recognise their kind around them, the abuse they hurl and misery they induce are an attempt to create their own kind.

Yes, it’s true that throwing insults at someone could be construed as little more than a socio-Darwinistic attempt to weaken others and drive them out of the social circle, gene pool, etc. But then, why do these exchanges happen so frequently between couples, siblings, people who should have no interest in gaining an evolutionary one-up on the other? Because to slight someone can have an alternate purpose. If the insulter feels troubled and insecure, the insult can create a similar state in the victim. In spite of all the drama and tears, at least both are back in the same boat.

It’s warped, but the most cutting aspersion can actually bring people together. And if disparity is so often the reason for the discharge of unwarranted malice, then, hopefully, maintaining one’s awareness of this fact can defuse its power completely.

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Be Here Now

In Eckhart Tolle’s famous book “The Power Of Now“, he describes how people have lost the art of simply “being”, of existing purely from one moment to the next, without the neuroses of the past and the worries of the future attacking from all sides.

Our society, and in particular, our educational system, has inculcated us with the belief that happiness is always just around the corner, part and parcel of the next class, promotion or pay raise. We never quite get there, of course. There’s always another corner ahead to round.  It’s a recipe for never-ending incompleteness; how many people are totally happy with how they look or how they think? This is heaven for the advertising industry – they always have the snake oil to cure what ails ya’. Indeed, this basic sense of constant individual inadequecy could very well be the core of virtually all of humanity’s ills.

Tolle suggests that all of this results from our perception of time; or at least, what our current social constructions say how time should be perceived. Ancient cultures such as the Mayans believed that time is purely a cyclic edifice, moving through great periods of destruction and creation, but always evolving. Many indigenous cultures believe that the very idea of time itself is futile. In fact , if you really think about it, the whole idea of the past and the future are purely theoretical. We never, ever experience them. We are only ever “here” and “now”. Even the most immersive memories and hypotheses are little more than projections of a mind that can only ever exist in the present. Indeed, Tolle suggests that these flights of the psyche are distractions from “now”, which is what we should truly appreciate.

If we get into the habit of living “now” (which Tolle says can be aided greatly by regular meditation, which is essentially the practice of grounding oneself in pure, unthinking existence), then we can be free of the jealousies and fears that exist only as elements of the constructs of the “past” and the “future”. This is not a new concept; but Tolle has updated it from Vedic scriptures and the Upanishads to be understandable by the denizens of modern society.

If all of this seems like pedantic semantics, remember that modern science seems to confirm many of these theories. Einstein himself was a pioneer of the idea that time was almost as flexible or as static as one perceived it to be. Once, when asked to explain Relativity Theory, he famously illustrated it with the observation that an hour on a bench with a pretty girl seemed like a moment, while a moment on a hot stove seemed like an hour. As Dr. Roy Mathew says, “Einstein . . . added support to the concept that time and the mundane reality are both non-substantial. Time, Einstein showed, was relative and therefore, the mundane world with time as its basis also had to be ephemeral.”

Time is not a mechanical contruct with cogs and wheels. It is as malleable as each individual’s experience of it. We should then, as Tolle hypothesizes, tweak or even overhaul completely that experience in order to filter out the unnecassary flotsam of jetsam of the ideas of past and future. We should end the perception of ourselves as moving towards an uncertain future, carrying the debris of the past. Only then will we destroy the neuroses that emerge purely from these ideas.